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Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

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Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#71
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk without risk mitigation is just bad business.

You don't understand risk or business if you think a good business mitigates all risks, or even its largest risks. The biggest risk for a medical company is harming patients. Do they just throw up their hands and stop being a medical company? The biggest risk for social media firm is the social media they serve through goes down. So what, they throw up their hands and stop being a social media firm?

The biggest risk is losing all money and going out of business. Harming patiences are a cost.

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#72
Saw this a few months ago (strangely it seems ok for us at the moment) With no response or acceptance there was a problem from FB it started working 2 weeks later.

If your users are professional/business you should be using the graph API - this is much better supported/tested. To me the display/basic API feels like something that isn’t that integral to FB and could be dropped at any time.

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#73
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is easy to say as a comment on HN but unavoidable to a large degree for businesses in the marketing and social media space.

you play in the mud, you're going to get dirty. if your entire marketing company focuses on social, then why that doesn't fall into "all eggs, one basket" concept is beyond me. Sure, it's much easier to get a company rolling when you have to do nothing but use the product of someone else as the core of your business, but why that's not an immediate red flag to someone in that position is something i just don't unders…

Sorry that’s nonsense. Companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on FB and IG marketing (presumably because they see a benefit) and are willing to pay companies to help them do it.

Many companies large and small rely on getting most of their business from a single entity, whether that’s the US military, Ford, or contractors working at a local company.

No business opportunity will last forever

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you play in the mud, you're going to get dirty. if your entire marketing company focuses on social, then why that doesn't fall into "all eggs, one basket" concept is beyond me. Sure, it's much easier to get a company rolling when you have to do nothing but use the product of someone else as the core of your business, but why that's not an immediate red flag to someone in that position is something i just don't unders…

Sorry that’s nonsense. Companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on FB and IG marketing (presumably because they see a benefit) and are willing to pay companies to help them do it. Many companies large and small rely on getting most of their business from a single entity, whether that’s the US military, Ford, or contractors working at a local company. No business opportunity will last forever

> No business opportunity will last forever

Typically, one tries (if one can) to build a business larger than a single opportunity.

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#75

There is nothing more frustrating than a status page that lies about the state of an API. Feels like insult + injury. I'd rather they not even have a status page!

There have been various attempts to create status pages that aren’t controlled by the companies they are watching. Not sure which are the most popular now.

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#76
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you play in the mud, you're going to get dirty. if your entire marketing company focuses on social, then why that doesn't fall into "all eggs, one basket" concept is beyond me. Sure, it's much easier to get a company rolling when you have to do nothing but use the product of someone else as the core of your business, but why that's not an immediate red flag to someone in that position is something i just don't unders…

Marketers and customer service need to be able to manage their social accounts, that's a product space which inherently relies on API access to those website. Maybe you wouldn't want to build that product, but clearly somebody will.

Could you just use API's IG app uses itself to manage accounts? And scrape the data you need with GET requests behind a proxy list? Before any public APIs everybody was doing it, is it any hard these days to fall back to regular user API instead of some fancy regulated 'developer-only' API?

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#77
post #76
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketers and customer service need to be able to manage their social accounts, that's a product space which inherently relies on API access to those website. Maybe you wouldn't want to build that product, but clearly somebody will.

Could you just use API's IG app uses itself to manage accounts? And scrape the data you need with GET requests behind a proxy list? Before any public APIs everybody was doing it, is it any hard these days to fall back to regular user API instead of some fancy regulated 'developer-only' API?

Its all rate limited. Inpossible to scrape

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry that’s nonsense. Companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on FB and IG marketing (presumably because they see a benefit) and are willing to pay companies to help them do it. Many companies large and small rely on getting most of their business from a single entity, whether that’s the US military, Ford, or contractors working at a local company. No business opportunity will last forever

> No business opportunity will last forever Typically, one tries (if one can) to build a business larger than a single opportunity.

Of course, that doesnt need to be said. But tell that to the entrepreneurs that sold businesses that rely on another platform for millions of dollars. If they listened to your advice, they would probably be nowhere as wealthy

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#79
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you just use API's IG app uses itself to manage accounts? And scrape the data you need with GET requests behind a proxy list? Before any public APIs everybody was doing it, is it any hard these days to fall back to regular user API instead of some fancy regulated 'developer-only' API?

Its all rate limited. Inpossible to scrape

Rate limited for what? Totally possible to buy 1000 SOCKS5 proxies for cheap, what's the deal with the limit?

Re: Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green

#80

Meta (Facebook/Instagram) must have not taken the Twitter route during their mass layoffs. You cut non-essential folks firstly and critical operational personnel lastly.

I gather you haven't tried to use the Twitter Ads API lately. :) This is literally an API that makes it easier for people to give money to Twitter. And yet it's seemingly abandoned since the Musk takeover, with the old documentation taken down and the support forums ignored.

Is it still in Elon Musk's business model, perhaps that's what he wanted.
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